When Jon Waters played basketball at Christopher Newport from 1988 to 1991, he never imagined anything like what he saw on Thursday.

CNU officially unveiled its $26 million renovation of the Freeman Center, showing off 67,000 square feet of shininess, including an auxiliary gymnasium, an expanded fitness center and a 400-seat, state-of-the-art theater.

That, just hours after four towering light poles were driven into the ground at POMOCO Stadium, part of a $600,000 project that will enable the Captains' football team to play night games for the first time in its 11-year history.

"These two specific projects are just a lot of the fuel that continues to push us forward," said Waters, who's worked full time in CNU administration since 1996 and, in his current job as the school's senior associate athletic director, oversees facility renovations. "… It's been an amazing evolutionary process, actually."

As honored guests, including CNU board members and former Newport News mayor Joe Frank, filed into the theater, that process kept on going. Smoke billowed above the ubiquitous bulldozers that are making way for a new dorm, a new parking lot, a new something seemingly every minute on the campus of the 4,952-student, Division III school.

"Sometimes you drive home and you come back the next day and you think, 'This is not my school. We didn't have this yesterday,' " said CNU athletic director C.J. Woollum, entering his 28th year in that capacity. "It's just amazing. … It's a vastly different place from when I came in '84. That doesn't mean there was anything bad before. It just means we've grown."

That growth was attributed by speaker after speaker on Thursday to university president Paul Trible, on that job since 1996. Woollum's words for his boss included "incredible" and "magic."

"I think he's done $70 million in new construction this far, and there's another $50 million on the books," Woollum said. "When it's finally finished, if there is ever a finish, I can't imagine another school anywhere that is going to have greater facilities than we have."

However, Trible said CNU's growth will not come at the expense of the core identity of a public school preparing to celebrate 50 years of serving the Newport News community.

"CNU has always been incredibly student-centered," Trible said. "CNU has always offered great teaching, professors that really cared about their students and were there to support them every step of the way. Those traditions, we continue to honor, and we've worked hard to go from strength to strength.

".. A great community needs a great university."

CNU preened in Thursday's spotlight, with about a dozen dignitaries participating in the Freeman Center ribbon-cutting while Captains basketball coaches and players milled about. Earlier that afternoon, CNU football players headed out to practice in the shadow of with four brand-new, energy-efficient light poles.

Senior linebacker Mike King, the Captains' leading returning tackler who had 99 stops in 2010, has fond memories of playing under the lights, having won a state championship at Westfield High at U.Va.'s Scott Stadium.

"That was one of the greatest moments of my life," King said. "When I think of the lights, I always think of that."

Waters waited anxiously during the 12 weeks it took to get the lights ordered, delivered and installed, and now he has to sweat this weekend's expected visit from Hurricane Irene. But he's confident in the lights' durability — and in their significance.

"It can be stressful at times, but it's never a point where it's a strain," Waters said. "… That's part of our growth — we're not really intimidated by challenges."

That's clear in the athletic arena, where Captains teams won a school-record 78 percent of their games in the 2010-11 season and captured the President's Cup, given to the most successful USA South program, for the 14th straight season.

Whether the wins are a product of top-notch facilities, or whether those facilities attract top-notch athletes, Waters is convinced the two things are connected.

"It's not really a coincidence that we're coming off our best year," Waters said. "For us, as a non-scholarship program, it really is about selling the educational experience, and then the facilities on top of it. You really never know what the difference-makers can be.

"I'm not a golfer, but we feel like it's important right now for us to have every club in the bag to continue to attract the kind of student-athletes we want to attract."

A Tiger Woods-worthy set was on display Thursday.

"The passion for this place is so great now, with our students and with our faculty, because they know they're part of something special," said Kevin Hughes, CNU dean of students, who said colleagues from across the country approach him at conferences to discuss his school's academics and athletics. "They look to us as leaders, and not, 'Christopher Who?' That's been great."